The Big Fat Indian Wedding

I have had two weeks of unadulterated fun. The turn of events which surprisingly led to this, is what this post is about.
Since my exams got over, and there was a wedding in the family, I have been caught up in the mania they call the great Indian wedding. Before I go on, let me reveal that my family is probably the most boring family on earth, when it comes to weddings. To put it in a nutshell, we don’t believe in going over the top, or celebrating like there is no tomorrow, both of which, as I see it, are essential ingredients for any hungama. They are, what my brother, would call ‘hygiene factors’ in his management lingo. Things which have to be there if you want a proper Indian shaadi. We, as a family, are not into this Punjabi style of celebration; we celebrate but in moderation.
I think the idea that excess if crass, got into our family, through years of living in Bengal. I have heard stories, of how an uncle of my mother’s nana flew kites, which had banknotes attached to it, to celebrate his nephew’s birth. He raised a din over it, quite literally when he organized a walking music band to tour the entire city. For everyday celebrations, he played host to theatre companies, staging shows at his own cost, in his own house, for his coterie of friends. Even in those days, such extravagance was looked upon as superfluous. Later, through my nana’s marriage into the family, the interaction with a family of hufaaz[1] took its toll and the family began to pay more attention to the Islamic tenet of moderation. I think, at this point, decades of living in Calcutta also helped; we imbibed Bengali values, and ended up rejecting excess, and embracing moderation. Rooftops of our numerous houses in Calcutta didn’t play hosts to patang-baazis any more, they looked like gentler and maybe even austere shadows of their former selves. This did not mean that we didn’t celebrate, but there was none of the extravagance of old. My aunts and uncles got married in this style and were content with it. The youngest of them however, has , for the good of the next generation of the family, turned out to be an aberrant. It has him, who got married last week. It was a extravagant week long celebration, starting with the haldi, and ending with the walima, the grand finale. Everyone enjoyed themselves to the hilt; me and my cousins more so. It was though no where near Punjabi weddings, and neither crass, nor in poor taste , as opulent celebrations like those, sometimes turn out to be. The difference between the two can be grasped, if you compare the Bachchan wedding to the Chatwal or the Mittal. While the Bachchans celebrated in style , but with good taste, the Chatwals hosted a month long celebration, playing host to drunk firangis. As much as I have come to cringe at dad Bachchan’s popping-out-of-a-hat act in each and every film, and tear my hair at beta Bachchan’s political correctness, I must admit they did get this wedding right. It suited their stature, and looked like simple, good fun; just the right mix for a wedding. It’s another story, that the money Bachchan saved at the wedding, was poured onto the deity’s feet at Tirupati, and sealed up in the temple’s coffers; it could have, perhaps, been put to more immediate and effective use, for the good of mankind.
[1] Plural of hafiz, a person who has learnt the Quran by heart.

delhi bas?

I’ve just come back from delhi. Half frozen and near death. The capital of democratic India , I’ve realized, is not the sunny cuckoo-land I’ve always pictured it as. It is a vicious evil urban jungle which works in connivance with sharp chilling winds. Winds which slyly work their way around you undaunted by layers of woolies and wraps, under a bleak foggy grey sky.

People tell me that that is what you get if you go to delhi in winter. I tell them I wish they had told me this sooner. Then I could have saved many a shiver and many an ..er…wasted expletive.

Not to mean that it was a totally wasted trip. I saw things which I hadn’t before seen in delhi….the lotus temple.. much nicer auto-rickshaw walas who stop in the middle of the road incase you want to take a couple of snaps of India gate from that just-the-right-angle… famous kebabs from karim’s ( hidden in one of the numerous crooked, bustling lanes which surround jama masjid)… connaught place (a term which here means ‘shopping! shopping!’)… women who ( as rahul bose says in one of his films) dress like it’s diwali everyday,… and humayun’s tomb (which is not exactly a tomb, but a sprawling complex, which houses many monuments, all of which, in a sense, commemorate death).

Actually, now that I think of it , it seems pretty weird that the mughals celebrated something like death, which is usually supposed to be the ultimate-dampener-of-spirits, the ultimate-wet-thumb-on-hot-stove experience, in such a grandiose fashion. They built tombs,(beautiful ones, I agree, but tombs all the same) pretty much wherever they went. Infact, if you try throwing a ball around, in delhi, I’m pretty sure that you’ll be hitting atleast one such, in every three tries.

Talking of death, I recently read a poem by Emily Dickinson (a slightly loony poet who talked to her friends while being partially hidden, under her bed, and had her doctor diagnose her as she walked by an open door). In this poem, death is like a suitor who takes her out. Her attitude is such, that, she feels a bit annoyed at all the unwanted attention, and yet goes out with him for the sake of civility. Surprisingly, they have a great time-it’s a moonlit night, he gets a carriage, and they roam about the city and pass familiar sights together; the point being, that something, which you think is just going to be a fat lot of trouble, may actually turn out to be not so bad after all.

Well, I guess that’s true.

I could actually say that for this post of mine.

Ciao.

My lean, mean working machine!

Much has happened in the week gone by. Italy has won the world cup, Federer has once again proclaimed territory at SW 19, my PC has had a makeover and I have formulated plans on how to wrest a master’s degree in English literature from JU without much effort or attendance. Talking of my PC, it has been totally revamped. It is now the proud owner of a new processor, more memory, a sleek black cabinet and a cool black-grey keyboard with multimedia keys. The wonder of it all; the evolution of a drab piece of electronic junk into a lean, mean working machine was as astounding as that of the fairytale frog into prince charming..Ofcourse, after I saw what prince charming actually looks like, in shrek 2, it doesn’t seem much of a transition, really…Anyway, the white monitor and ups do look a bit nondescript before these new guys but I like it better this way. The dual tones of black and white seems to me to be quite a strong comment on the issue of racial equality and the urgent need for disparate sections of humanity to unite into a merging whole…also, ofcourse I like it better now because..um…black or white,it finally works!I’m, generally speaking, not very adept at handling modern technology. I can mend the iron (yes I can) but the object which I speak of can by no stretch of imagination be called modern. I mean, there are irons and there are irons. This is neither. It’s a piece of devilish intent and malicious design, picked up by my dad, which doesn’t believe in the concept called work. The day it does work, is a day of celebration. There is only one piece of antiquity which rivals this contraption and that is a tape-recorder. Last heard of, it was blaring its way into damnation, by torturing poor souls at my brother’s college hostel. Since then, there has been no news…But to come back to what I was saying. Technology and I don’t go together. I mean, take this PC of mine. It has broken down atleast six times in the past year and I’m not talking of a computer’s equivalent of minor colds when I say this. I mean proper breakdowns, which takes weeks to get it back in line. Then,… there’s lifts. Nothing much about them except that I don’t like them. My college lift has a habit of staying invitingly still when you don’t need it, and immediately moving up or down when you walk towards it. If you are lucky enough to get in, it will invariably move in the direction opposite to the one you want it to go. So if you want to go from the second to the ground floor, it will first take you up to the fifth and then all the way to the ground floor….. And don’t even get me talking about my mobile. It switches off in the middle of a conversation. Whenever, wherever. A mind of its own. And now it’s taught my mum’s mobile to do the same. Aargh!So now that I have finally got atleast one of these - my PC - working , you can excuse my gushing about it. After all, it’s not everyday that one has cause for such celebration.

Around fifteen new people have come in our class. Since JU is the best for post-grad English in the country, thousands sat for the admission test. I ofcourse, being good enough to get in once did not have to take the test again. Thank God.So. Some of them look like arrogant idiots. Which I’m sure they are. There’s one who looked like a dead fish while amlan da, the best of the best, cracked jokes while teaching us greek crit. For all you know, it was greek to this guy. He didn’t even crack a smile.Anyway, I have developed a sudden interest in orkut; the importance of social networking sites being plain to me now since one of my closest friends Tanya, left college for greener pastures. She’s joined a card company near deshopriyo park. Here’s wishing her the very best in life. Have a happy ever after!

Its been ages since i updated my blog..thing is, that i blog from univ and since i have been on a long end sem break, i just dont go to univ any more...thereby allowing cobwebs to gather on the blog..watched the germany- argentina match yesterday..what a match!! anyone who missed it, really lost out on sommething..i wanted germany to win..and they really managed to buck up in the second half and put up an attacking front..ballack (he's sooo wow!) really is the backbone of the team and stands out ..klose ofcourse is also very good..i like the way he gets really pumped up when he scores..all that jumping and gesticulating and screaming..great to see so much enthu..football in this sense is so different from cricket..for one it goes on and on..watching single match takes all day long and even then more often than not india loses..its so ..placid..football's fast and racy and short..and much easier on the eyes..(think of ballack) . one good thing about the world cup has been the fact that they show some really good ads..i just love the adidas one with the tagline 'impossible is nothing'..it shows two ten year old kids summoning some of the best footballers in the world and forming their respective teams in a poor favela of south america..you see lampard, beckham,ballack,zidane et all materialising from nowhere..even a young beckenbeaur turns up..they play and lampard shoots..the ball hits the bar and the goalie..i think its oliver kahn catches it..the players start arguing whether it was a goal or not..just then a woman appears at one of the balconies overlooking the lane and shouts something in spanish to one of the two kids..he goes rsup to kahn,snatches the ball out of his hands and walks away..the players leave with a groan..the then you have the tagline..'impossible is nothing'...it really is one of the best ads i've ever seen on tv..

doesnt urdu poetry totally rock?!!here's another-patta patta boota boota haal hamara jane haijane na jane gul hi na jane, baag to sara jane hai

I’m back!! After a bitter struggle against demonic cosmic forces, finta the survivor has managed to defeat them ! and once again due to finta the powerpuff the city has been saved! Bwahaahaa!!!I realize that I havnt posted anything since a long time and that everyone has been missing me madly…which is why this post is dedicated to all my fans out there..yayyyy! (loud thunderous applause)…!!!Actually , I’ve been having too much fun to be bored enough to write …;-)…a couple of days back, six of us bunked college and spent the day at deep’s place…deep had been owing us a treat since 1st yr and its really to his credit that he managed to hold us back for so long.. anyway, we ambushed him on Monday and held a sort of potluck party at his place..Each of us brought something along..sandy made awesome chocolate fudge , poushali got vanilla ice cream to go with it, priyanka made parathas and French fries ( because I just cant do without potatoes at lunch).. I had keema with me, deep made chicken kababs and momo generally helped with the parathas and the potatoes..It was really god fun. And since you missed it, here are some highlights-1. sandy and I doing a Cossack dance on the rooftop, in order to ward off salt lake mosquitos. They’re huge and unlike your ordinary version, not to be scared away with arbit hand-flapping.. (for those who don’t know what a cossack dance is , suffice it to say that it involves crossing your arms stoically and kicking randomly.)2. poushali staring away to glory at a supposedly ugly ‘naked’ guy in the house opposite. Don’t ask me the details, I did’nt look.3. momo giving us the lowdown on…well, pretty much everyone.4. chocolate brown sanyal (deep’s dog-a Labrador) refusing to budge, or bark or yelp or do anything which normal dogs do.And5. priyanka refusing to admit that she’s obsessed with her blog..;-)that’s it, folks! So, till next time, keep missing me..p.s- I have also been presenting important papers at important national seminars to be able to blog…my very-very-important-academically-researched-and-proffessionally-presented paper was on…er..(awkward silence)....the lord of the rings…p.p.s- I FINALLY saw rang de basanti!!!

javed akhtar in jadavpur

A week ago, the department of film studies of my university organized a one day seminar on the dialectic between hindi films and urdu poetry. This turned out to be a first in various ways. Not many universities of course, can boast of a film studies department and when one’s university falls into this rarest of rare categories of actually possessing a department wholly concerned about what is frankly, a mode of entertainment to me, and treats watching films as a necessary component of an academic discourse, then, I believe one should boast bluntly and boisterously about it. Which is exactly what I’m going to do.To come back, however, if you can bear my superciliousness any longer, to the seminar, it was a first in multiple ways, because, it was wholly about hindi films and not Indian or foreign films in general and also because the department got hold of one of india’s brilliant poets; also an evocative lyricist and a leading intellectual; javed akhtar; to speak on the subject.Javed saab, was such a change from the usual film-maker/critic who speaks at seminars. He did not talk about godard as if he’s known him since childhood. Nor did he insist on dissecting, one of the rare critically acclaimed films which you actually liked, to the ultimate extent of shredding it to bits, with the multiple-pronged knife of modern critical theories, and then proceeding to gas it with copious quantities of pungent, verbal verbose. I hasten to add, however, that not all film critics do that. It requires immense skill and one can acquire perfection only after years of practice. It is , however , (not to discourage potential critics) an art which can be mastered, though being, of no use to people like javed akhtar.Javed saab adopted a very simple approach. Credit also goes, ofcourse to the film studies profs for letting it remain so.In the first half, he read out about a dozen of his poems. A professor from City College(?) , who was accompanying him, translated them into either English or bangla as he went along.He started with a simple poem about a room; ‘ek kamrah’. It’s about the room which he used to live in, with the open casement;’daricha’, and the overflowering creeper outside it. It had two chairs; two twin sisters. It also had two vases, which constantly quallered between themselves. And the poet would lie on the bed and weave webs of stories while staring at the network of rafters on the roof. Now, today, he possesses a huge house;palatial,one would say… ‘bahut bada aur alishan’…. And yet in the silent loneliness of this house, the poet realizes, that his old room used to ‘speak to’ him…woh kamrah baatein karta tha…..The essence of the poem is ofcourse lost while translating it to other languages. In urdu however it sounded absolutely beautiful and was received with thunderous applause. His poem ‘doraha’ or ‘crossroads’ which he once wrote for his daughter zoya ,he now dedicated to the innumerable young women in the audience. He also quipped that the applause was somehow louder when he read a couple of romantic poems, one of which was adapted for the song ‘kabhie kabhie’. On a more serious note , there were 2 poems;’ fasaad ke pehle’ and ‘fasaad ke baad’, ‘fasaad’ meaning ‘riot’. He ended by reciting ‘waqt’, an apparent favourite. The atmosphere, needless to say, was absolutely electrifying, by now and his one-liners like ‘I realized all good looking men cant act’ on being asked why he never wanted to act in films , had the whole house in splits.The second half of the programme was dedicated to a question-answer session. Queries ranged from ‘do you support remakes and remixes?’ to ‘why do you think forms of urdu poetry, other than the ghazal, is dying out?’ . Queries to which Javed saab answered with his inimitable wit and élan. A memorable moment was when he said that one should see , not why, but how a film is re-made, a la, devdas etc. , and someone from the audience quipped ‘so how is farhan making don?!!’ Snippets of scenes from sholay ( gabbar singh with steam coming out of his ears and nostrils, legs astride, lashing his whip left and right and going ‘arre o sambha…kitne aadmi thhe’ in the background), and deewar ( bachhan ranting like a madman to poor shashi kapoor who apparently thinks having a mother like nirupa roy, who turns on the waterworks at a moment’s notice, is God’s way of being nice to him) and songs like ‘ek ladki ko dekha’( no snide comments here..i like the song) were also shown while he spoke on urdu poetry in general, and on the deteriorating nature of language being used in films….In short, javed saab had the audience eating out of his hands. His wit, language and style( not to forget the yellow kurta) floored all.We applauded him,cheered him,loved him….and sadly, also mobbed him… hope he didn’t much mind the last bit though…I mean , it’s not very often that he has pretty Judeans like us ( and I only mean the girls, here) chasing after him, does he?

waiting for..(with apologies to beckett)

I saw TheTerminal today. Its about a man named victor, who is stranded at the new york airport for a long time before he can go home to krakozhia or put a toe on United States soil. He is a man without a country because war has broken out in his homeland and the U.S refuses to recognize it any more. He is a man who has come to the U.S to get an autograph from a jazz singer ; an autograph which, his father waited forty years for, before dying.He is a man who waits.In a sense all of us are waiting for something. Victor waits to get the coveted autograph. He waits to go home. Whenever someone asks him what he is doing at the airport;coming or going, he says he’s waiting. And when the woman he falls in love with, the beautiful air-hostess Amelie asks him what he’s waiting for, he says he waits for her. Curious ofcourse,how they all know what questions to ask, to get just the kind of answer, we are expecting. But that’s beside the point.What one waits for varies from person to person. Farmers wait for grey-bellied rain clouds. Children for holidays and to grow up as soon as possible; Indians for a century every time sachin tendulkar takes up a bat. Greg chappell is ofcourse still waiting for ganguly to step down..Many of us wait for a promotion or a scholarship or a dream-home. Many more still wait for love. And then there are the Joeys of the world who only wait for the pizza to be delivered to their doorstep.Is it really that the world is frozen in mid-action or suspended in unending limbo…or is it only a weird idea I came up with? Frankly, I don’t know.What I do know is this. As of now, the only thing I’m waiting, no,longing for, after a dreary month of snuffling and sniveling noses, and watery eyes is a really hot Indian summer…and I have my fingers crossed..

be rude, its in

What is it with people nowadays? Why have a large proportion of our society suddenly resorted to rudeness as a necessary ingredient, in the messy concoctions of their daily lives? Niceness, ofcourse was pushed out from the recipe a long time back , but if downright rudeness is to be used in such huge quantities, then, I think (though I am no cook) that it shall certainly spoil the broth, even though there may not be too many cooks to aid in the process.My mother who has been teaching for 20-something years in a reputed college in kolkata ,recently had the misfortune of going to a Govt. center which handles the educational affairs of the state, for some work. Work,however seemed to be the only activity which the staff didn’t believe in. Some people had already left even though it wasn’t yet 2pm, some were busy gossiping, and the rest hadn’t bothered to come at all. My mother did the necessary running from pillar to post and after repeated rounds, she was finally led to the head clerk (read: the king of the nazguls) , who was under a huge misconcenception that he was the most important person in the whole wide world. Anyway, she went upto him and asked him to retrieve her file which has all the details. Woe betide her, that she also happened to use the word ‘please’, in her request !! As soon as he heard ‘please’, the man promptly got up enraged and said,“ aapni amake ‘please’ kano bolchen?” ; (why are you saying ‘please?’).Whatever reply my mother was expecting, she certainly wasn’t expecting this. Perhaps, she expected him to stage a walk-out ( they have been known to do this at the drop of a hat, ofcourse, and I expect, write of it with glowing pride in their resumes) or maybe she expected him to throw tantrums, but I can say it with certainty that she did NOT expect him to protest against her using polite language!!……………………………My mother was flabbergasted……………….. (Which I might add, I quite an achievement on the man’s part.) She could only meekly reply,“ ‘Please’ to kono kharab katha nei” ; ( please isn’t a bad word…)Imagine explaining THAT to someone!I know it sounds incredulous but it really happened. I only wish I knew what he thought ‘please’ meant so that I could send him anonymous letters in which every second word would be, you guessed it right, ‘please’!!Mom, ofcourse couldn’t get any work done that day and has to go again next week.God help her.But that happened in a Govt. center and those places have a reputation of harbouring people who have a long standing tradition to think of before behaving politely or getting any work done. Consider this, now.I was supposed to submit a term paper today, which I did. I had quoted from an essay which had been photocopied and circulated in class by a professor, and consequently did not have the bibliographical details pertaining to that essay. I could just cite the name of the essay and its author in my paper but conventions have to be followed and so, I vainly tried searching the Net and the Digital Library network to locate the book for more than two hours. It didn’t work. Just after that I met a friend and told him about the problem. He recommended searching the net, to which I said that I had and that I hadn’t found it. His reaction was –“Impossible!! Give me the name of the author, I’ll do it!!”To which I said, “Great! Do it now!”And he said, “Now? Why would I be bothered to do it now?”So I said, “Oh! So you only want to show that you can do it, not help me out?!”.And he said, “Duh!!”.And promptly started talking to another friend who was standing by.So you see, niceness is out. Rudeness is in. The couple of instances that I have given, are personal instances because I know they happened and are in no way hearsay. But there are many other incidents which I have seen or heard of in which people have behaved very rudely, and for apparently no reason at all.Why do they feel such a compelling need to be rude? To show that they can afford to be rude? Or perhaps they feel that being rude is wielding power and that niceness is weakness? Or do they confuse rudeness with wit? Or do they have a totally inverted sense of what’s rude and what’s not? To the unimaginable extent that they think ‘please’ is a rude word ?!Whatever the reason, it is happening. And I wish it wouldn’t. It really doesn’t take much to be nice or polite or to help someone out. Just a smile, or a few kind words. And I don’t think that’s too difficult, is it?
# posted by zish @ 6:23 AM 4 comments

ze blog about ze blog

Blogging has never appealed to me. It seems to me to be a somewhat deceitful medium of communication;giving one a sense of privacy akin to a private diary and yet reaching out to more people imaginable than is normally possible in any given discussion And yet here I am.As the years go by,I have noticed a consistent tendency in myself to do things which I had sworn to myself that I would never do. Especially things which everyone wanted to do. My way of rebellion, you could say.Take harry potter for example. The brouhaha around the boy wizard was annoying to say the least and the way we have contributed our bit to making him a cultural icon was absolutely shocking,I assumed. And yet inspite of all my outraged protestations on getting sucked into the madness of pottermania, I read the books and to put it in quite clichéd terms,fell for them hook,line and sinker. They’re absolutely amazing!! Atleast the first four are, when rowling hasn’t yet started putting in box-office touches..It was the same with the much acclaimed lord of the rings. Said I wouldn’t read them or see the film and now am the proud owner of cds of all three films and an extremely handsome copy of the book. There are other instances as well…. reading Paulo coelho, watching Jackie chan films, cheering for a losing Team India, howling for sania mirza, debating on the great chapel-ganguly fiasco…the list goes on….The latest, as you no doubt have guessed ,is blogging.I tried to resist but it wasn’t to be. I suppose its what they call destiny.